How can I configure the PalmOS Emulator so that I can open a socket from my J2ME application to a server application running on the host workstation?

Your J2ME application uses CLDC-based TCP client sockets via the KVM, which uses the underlying PalmOS networking library, "NetLib". NetLib in turn uses the host workstation's TCP stack.

There has been a discussion thread on Sun's kvm-interest mailing list about enabling NetLib on POSE. The short of it is that you need to redirect POSE's NetLib calls to your host TCP stack. You do this by right clicking in a POSE session, then selecting "Properties..." and checking the "Redirect NetLib calls to host TCP/IP" box in the pop-up dialog.

This is discussed in several related kvm-interest threads on using POSE with NetLib.